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March 23, 2009

This was my first year at SXSW - big shout out to the
Gods at Ogilvy's 360 Digital Influence Group for sending me down to the
Lone Star State! I originally intended to write two "wrap" posts on
SXSW - one from me, and one "round up" featuring insights and takeaways
that I solicited individually from some of the best and brightest in
the social media space over email and Twitter. However, as I was
working on both simultaneously I discovered that - as usual - 15 social
media brains are better than one (even though I like my brain). So, I
decided to write one post and share out the four biggest insights that
I culled from my own experiences and the wisdom of the masses.

Social Media - Evolution After the Big BangThe future of
social media is going to be a big, ever-evolving cluster. We're moving
at warp speed away from siloed platforms. Everything is becoming
portable - you can pipe in content from any network you belong to on to
your blog. Tumblr's on the rise. Facebook is redesigning to be more
like Twitter. Open ID and Facebook Connect allow you to transport all
your networks to wherever YOU are online. Each evolution of a major
platform seeks to integrate the best of what's around. I believe we're
going to see fewer moves to new innovative, break through platforms as
people start looking towards "mega sites" that do everything for them
in one place.

Trends that others picked up on support this hypothesis (though
were emailed to me individually - not in reaction to my own idea
above.) Mack Collier noted, "I heard people saying that they don't
want more tools because that just means more information, they want
better ways to organize and manage the information they have now."
Jason Falls emailed to me that he felt, "Too many start-ups are trying
to become the next big thing. They need to start collaborating with
others. The next big thing won't be a stand-alone anything." Bill
Beutler shared that he, "didn’t see anything new and amazing: there was
no “this year’s Twitter” and my guess is most years there won’t be.
Relatively big announcements, WeFollow and Foursquare, are extensions
of or applications for Twitter. I expect the same at SXSW 2010." Is
this good or bad for social media - will integration increasingly
supplant pure innovation?

Twitter, By Any Other Name

The power of
Twitter blew me away at SXSW. It made me wonder what people did at
conferences before Twitter existed, because it played such an integral
role in not only planning my own experience day to day in real time,
but in connecting with friends new and old, and gleaning information
and insights from panels going on around me that I couldn't attend.
Paul McEnany felt the same way sharing with me that, "Twitter to SXSW
is like email to corporate America. I know it existed before it, but
I’m not really sure how. It’s a concept too big for me to wrap my head
around, like God or the sound of one hand clapping."

However, Greg Verdino rained a little on this echo chamber Twitter
love fest when he rightly noted that "While the princes and princesses
of the social media geekdom were debating what comes next after Twitter
– Foursquare? Augmented reality on mobile phones? ... for most people,
Twitter hasn’t even happened yet." Greg attended a film panel where one
panelist "hadn’t even heard of Twitter until last week, at which point
I noticed more than a few audience members around me fire up their
browsers and Google “twitter.” Those are the people who need to be on
Twitter before Twitter really starts to matter to most big businesses."

In thinking of this I recalled my take away from Charlene
Li's panel on the Future of Social Networks - which is that while Open
ID and Facebook Connect are great, I just can't see them being really
and truly widely adopted until Gen Y and Millennials come of age and
this sort of privacy based hyperconnectivity becomes the norm. Is
Twitter the same way? Shaq is on there. It was in Barack's tool kit.
Pepsi used it as the basis for their SXSW Pepsi Zeitgeist. Increasingly people have "heard of it" - but it's a hard platform to
experiment with. What will it take for Twitter to truly be considered
"mainstream"?Real Life, FTWWe all know the importance and power of face to
face experiences and interactions with our social media colleagues and
peers - but events like SXSW reinforce the necessity of coming out from
behind our screens every once in awhile. Peter Kim summed it up best
to me when he said, "In person is powerful. The value we create by
participating in virtual ecosystems is best capitalized upon when we
make face-to-face connections. After all, social media is all about
people, right?" This fact was definitely the largest reoccurring theme
from the crew I solicited SXSW insights from, and one of my own
biggest takeaways:

Jason Falls: SXSW is off-line Twitter. You walk into the big room
of people and can jump into any conversation you'd like. The vibe is
very open, the networking is very genuine and the connections you make
are very enriching.

Greg Verdino: For all the focus we place on our beloved social
media tools, nothing holds a candle to real live face-to-face
interaction. Don’t look for insights in the sessions – if you’re in
the social media space, you’ve heard it all before. Spend your time in
the hallways, at the parties and in the blogger lounge if you really
want to get value out of SXSW.

Lauren Cook: If anything, I learned more from the people around me than from the panels. That’s the power of SXSW.

David Alston: Quality face time in a fun atmosphere with folks I know and folks I didn't.

All Hat, No Cattle - AKA the Best Little Off Schedule Event In TexasIf
you somehow missed all the buzz about the All Hat, No Cattle event
organized by David Armano and Richard Binhammer from Dell then... actually I
think that's impossible. Between the Tweets, the blog posts, and the
20 or so new sepia toned "hatvatars" being rocked by many in the social
media world I think you'd have had to be in a coma to miss this one.
This was easily my favorite event of weekend - and was the definitive
"in real life" moment for many. Lauren Cook emailed me, "I will never,
ever skip the #allhat extravaganza again. You’re nobody at SXSW unless
you’re wearing a cowboy hat." Jason Falls commented that, "Social
media thinkers look better in cowboy hats," and David Alston not only
wrote a great blog post on All Hat but told me that his biggest take
away from SXSW was, "my new black Stetson cowboy hat :)"

Props to Chris Brogan, Beth Harte, Rohit Bhargava, Amanda Gravel,
Cappy Popp and Qui Diaz who also sent me some great take aways I'm
going to tweet out next week. SXSW 2009 officially ends with an
inspirational quote from Paul McEnany, "The key success in social media
is doing cool things. The key to failure is doing bad things. The key
to obsolescence is doing no things." See you at SXSW 2010, cowboys.

March 21, 2009

So, I'm sure you've all been waited with baited breath to find out what became of Doug Meacham and I in the OK! Happy Cog Cogaoke contest at SXSW this year.

Here is the story...

Chapter 1Doug and I finished a disappointing 21st in the original voting, which determined the 20 contestants. BUT, we were saved by an act of God when a contestant dropped out - bumping us into the action. The night of the big show we were one of the first performances on the stage. We consumed as many of the free contestant drinks as possible and looked out over the sea of faces...

Chapter 2Doug and I sang! This is one of the only pics I can find, but believe me when I say my eyes were open most of the time.

Chapter 3Lots of other people with way, way better stage acts got up. Some sang better, some sang worse. Armano did the double handed mic grab. Russ did the splits. To give you a sense of what we were up against, here are some shots from my boy Scott Stead and friends, aka Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Chapter 4The judges deliberated...and ultimately gave the award to some dude I didn't know who sang a song while I was in the bathroom. (Hey I never said this was going to be a good story, just look at the pictures and shut up.)

But - as always, we'll live to sing another day.

Epilogue- Social Karaoke

A small group of us who met at Blogger Social last year, have used a single night/morning of singing as the foundation for some truly awesome friendships that continue to grow online and off. As such, karaoke has become a great metaphor for the way that offline relationships and events can carry over into the social media space and strengthen your experiences there - making them more meaningful, relevant and personal.

This "social karaoke" theory can be easily applied to individuals and companies looking to build a brand online. Social media and the latest "it" platform will always have its place in connecting us to each other - but how much stronger could those connections be if they were reinforced with an offline, real world experience?

March 19, 2009

"There is a clear trend here towards fewer words delivered with
increased frequency. Given that each new web technology remains hip for
a shorter time than the previous, we should pretty soon see Twitter's
replacement in the form of a one-word blip that is constantly updated
by everyone alive."

March 16, 2009

More goodness from SXSW - I'm currently live blogging Presenting to the Brain with Cliff Atkinson, Kathy Sierra, Craig Ball, Jared Goralnick. I'm hoping to pick up some tips that will help me further avoid "death by power point" in my day to day work.

Cliff Atkinson (BPP Media): There are assumptions of communication that shape our mediums - however there is NO research that what we do today - bullet points on power point is useful to anyone.

Sensory and long term memory are unlimited in capacity - but the intersection of these, "working memory" only holds 3 - 4 memories. This is the eye of the needle, limitations of short term memory.

When you look at slides today, there is almost never a way to figure out what's more important. Must shift from looking at PPT as a piece of paper, and look at is a film strip.

Kathy Seirra (Creating Passionate Users): You must reach someone's brain, not just their conscious mind. Our brains have spam filters, and it's hard to tune. They are tuned to pay attention to things that help us survive - we're still cavemen.

PPT is not linear! You can adapt presentations, especially using hyperlinking to call up specific information for specific requests.

The Ken Burns Effect used visual and audio tricks to grab audiences attention - you can do this with the tools in PPT. You can do more advanced things than "flying text in from the left." This lets you take people places.

Biggest PPT Mistakes

Cliff: Overuse of speaker notes

Kathy: Presenting to the brain, not the mind. (i.e. a camera MANUAL about the tool versus a glossy BROCHURE)

Craig: We don't remember how the brain works - we can't HEAR text and READ text at the same time.

Lots of interesting points made here (but NOT bullet points...) I think big take away supports a presentation deck and a more text heavy leave behind if, like me, you do long presentations to present new business or major programs. It creates more work - but is something 360 Digital Influence frequently does to strong effect because it allows us to tell a story and keep people focused on our narrative.

March 14, 2009

Beamed directly to you from the SXSW Keynote by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.

1) Decide to build it - there are a lot of tradeoffs. You may have to
walk away from revenue or profits to be true to your long term vision.
Zappos gave up 25% of revenue to be true.

2) Figure out Values and Culture - Figure this out sooner rather than
later, best time to do it is when you're one or two people. You can
apply your personal core values - then you don't have to worry about
brand positioning. It doesn't matter what the values are, the most
important thing is alignment.
3) Commit to Transparency - Be real and use your best judgement no matter what platform you're representing the company on.

5)Build Relationships - This is not networking. Be interested in people and their ideas, not trading services in the short term. This will result in coincidences and opportunities you can't have imagined.

March 07, 2009

...that the urge to take ridiculous photos, especially while traveling in China, is a dominant recessive gene in my family. I'm proud to come from a long line of exhibitionist smart asses with a penchant for international travel.